Blind Sight (A Mallory Novel) (46 page)

—

THE MAYOR
’
S PRESS CONFERENCE
had been played and replayed on every channel. The lieutenant muted his office television. “That was cold.”

“I’d call it murder,” said Mallory. “It’s like Polk took out a contract to kill that boy.”

“At least he didn’t mention the name of the hospital. That gives Jonah a sporting chance to make it through the night.” Jack Coffey had been left on hold, his landline receiver pressed against one ear, and now he resumed his conversation with the commander of the Upper East Side precinct. Mallory was moving toward the door when he yelled, “Goddammit!” and she stopped, as if this might be her other name.

He said to the man on the line, “Greg, I know you guys
got
the damn picture! Why didn’t you circulate it?”

The irritated uptown commander transferred Coffey’s call to the man in charge of the hospital detail. Sergeant Murray picked up on the first ring with a surly,
“Speak!”
That word was packed with warning. The caller had better state his business
real
fast because the sergeant was one damn busy man tonight.

Coffey identified himself and said, “You don’t have an updated picture of the perp. So tell your guys to be on the lookout for a cop they don’t know. He might be wearing an NYPD uniform, and—”

“Count on it,” said Murray. “
I
did ’cause . . . like I told
your
guys, he was wearin’ one when he dumped those bodies on the mayor’s lawn.” The sergeant waited a beat, maybe daring the lieutenant to say one more word. “So . . . I got this
covered,
okay?” And the slammed-down phone said,
Call me back—and I’ll put you on hold for twenty years.

Oh, crap and miscommunication. With computerized scissors, Mallory had removed the long haircut from Ignatius Conroy’s high-school yearbook picture, and the face had been aged to give every cop in the city a decent likeness. All that time and effort wasted. The killer might have strolled past dozens of uniforms tonight.

The lieutenant checked his watch. Janos and Washington should be at Dwayne Brox’s place by now. He swiveled his chair to face Mallory. “You and Riker get over to Gracie Mansion. I’ll deal with the hospital.”

When she was out the door and gone, he phoned the guard on the boy’s hospital room, a young cop from his own station house, and he said to Officer Devon, “Check on him. Do it now.”

“I just did, sir. He’s fine. And there’s local uniforms on the street outside, maybe five guys out front. More in the back.”

Outside? Not inside where they belonged? Only one hospital in the city would have a visible police presence on the street tonight. “You mean they like . . . hung out a sign?” Oh, yes indeed. A public show of uniformed cops, well, that was as good as a light left burning in the window to welcome a hit man.

—

IGGY CONROY
drove the streets with a powered-up laptop on the passenger seat of his van. He had downloaded locations of more than twenty hospitals, and that was just freaking Manhattan. If the kid had been taken to another borough, this drive could last past sunup and land him in rush-hour traffic.

The list had been chopped by dropping small clinics and specialty shops for eye, ear, nose and throat, but that did not pare this night down to anything manageable. He was hemorrhaging time, though all he needed was a slow drive-by for every medical center. He would know the place when he saw it. The media had snitches everywhere, hospitals, too. Reporters always knew where the story was.

And there they were.

Double-parked news-show vehicles shared the street with patrol cars. Iggy rolled past them to park on the next block. He walked back to the hospital with no hurry to his steps, ambling along like any other cop reporting for duty. Getting past the five men guarding the entrance
was no trouble. They were undermanned, fending off the media and checking IDs for staff and visitors. Iggy’s stolen uniform blended in well with the chaos of cops in shouting matches with civilians, trading obscenities shot for shot. None of them gave Iggy a glance as he backed through a glass door, and no one in the lobby thought to question his right to enter a stairwell door that was marked
DO NOT ENTER
.

He climbed to the second floor, where all was quiet at the nurses’ station. No police in sight. He walked every corridor seeking a cop on guard duty to mark the boy’s room for him. Iggy planned an easy suffocation. Jonah would freak out, but not for long. Three minutes tops. Respiratory failure would fit nice with smoke inhalation. But there were no cops on this floor.

All those uniforms outside—it was like they expected a hit on the kid, but why? The police should have closed out all the murders when they found the drug dealer’s body in the burning bed back at the house. In Iggy’s experience of staging fatal accidents, they should have gone for the easy close. He should be dead to police on both sides of the bridge. He pushed through the stairwell door and climbed to the third floor, when he stopped to sag against the wall.

The cops knew that fire was arson.

His body folded to a hard sit-down on a concrete step. He had
told
the boy he was going to torch the house.

Loose ends. How many now? He had a picture of them wriggling like spider legs. Cut off one, and two grew back. Oh, and the mistakes. No one would buy Dwayne Brox as an accidental death, not with those marks on the body, not when they found the cop in the hall and the one downstairs stuffed in that carton.

Instead of a bathtub drowning, he might as well have slit the creep’s throat. All too clearly now, Iggy recalled the pounding he had given to Brox. Why? For two seconds of satisfaction? Did his mind have an off button? His memory had holes in it for sure. His eyes were trained on
the steps leading down, as if searching them for a crucial piece of his brain that he was missing tonight.

Blame it on lost sleep. He had gotten none in the van. He emptied a vial of pills into his hand. Down to five tablets, he dry-mouthed them all. The rush kicked in. His heart jackhammered a million beats a minute. And he was on his feet. Jangled. Angry. His chest tightened up, and one fist broke through the plaster of the stairwell wall. This had to STOP! STOP! STOP!

He climbed the stairs.

 
29

The bathroom was enormous by New York standards and not the least bit crowded by a party of four, all of them wearing latex golves. The on-call pathologist stood by the door waiting for a go-ahead from the woman with the camera. The crime-scene photographer took a picture of the brandy bottle on the floor. “I’ve seen this before,” she said. “I’d say it started out as a staged accident, and then it all went haywire. You’re sure a
pro
did this?”

“Yeah,” said Detective Janos. “Our guy’s just getting sloppy.”

“Angry, too.” Washington stared at the fully-dressed corpse in the bloody water of the bathtub. The nose of the late Dwayne Brox was broken, smashed to one side, and there were front teeth missing. But their hit man could be pardoned for this lapse in professionalism. When their soaking-wet victim was alive, every aspect of him had screamed,
Smack me!
He turned toward the door. “There’s blood drops out there by the TV. So that’s where Conroy snapped.”

Janos followed his partner back to the front room and the litter of empty bottles for beer and brandy. “I say the perp’s just barely holding it together.”

“That won’t last.” Washington held a green bottle up to the light.
“I figure him for the beer drinker, and this wasn’t wiped down.” His glance passed over an ashtray with half-smoked girly cigarillos to fix on the one full of unfiltered stubbed-out cigarettes. “He didn’t clean up his butts this time.”

Janos looked down at the blood drops on the carpet, and then he faced the television. It was still tuned to the city’s twenty-four-hour news station. “So Conroy’s watching TV, knocking back booze—”

“And there’s Andrew Fucking Polk on the screen, telling him the kid’s still alive. . . . I’m gonna check on Jonah.” Washington phoned the uptown sergeant in charge of the hospital security detail. It was a short conversation. “Bastard hung up on me. Says he’s getting calls from Special Crimes dicks every six minutes, and that’s gotta stop.”

—

THE BAREFOOT MAYOR
in robe and pajamas stood on the staircase, barring the way to his personal quarters on the floor above. “I’m not worried.”

Mallory believed him. “Our perp’s on a killing spree.”

“He’s jacking up his body count,” said Riker. “But not for the money this time. You get it now? He’s killing loose ends. You think he won’t come after you?”

“Why should he? I’m the
victim
in all this.”

Yeah, sure you are.
“The hit man’s little chat with Dwayne Brox was three beers long,” said Mallory. “And Brox took a beating before he died. Whatever he had on you—his killer knows it now.”

“Knows
what,
Detective?” The mayor’s tone made this a challenge.

Mallory smiled. “Did you know your aide and Dwayne Brox were classmates at Fayton Prep? They still meet for drinks.”

Only Riker registered surprise. She had shared Samuel Tucker’s cell-phone history to net them a mole in the DA’s Office—but not
all
the minutia of her background check and surveillance.

Polk lifted one shoulder in a shrug to say that this was of no consequence—but the timing was off. This was bad news to him. He looked down at the bodyguard standing by the banister. “Brogan, could you make me a sandwich?” Addressing the man’s partner, he said, “Courtney, give him a hand with that.” And the two detectives assigned to protect him walked away to do the job of kitchen maids with guns.

Riker was not liking this, watching cops being shamed, though Mallory knew he had no use for those two screwups. She looked up at the mayor. “How much do you trust your security detail? A lot got past them.”

“All those ransom notes and body parts,” said Riker. “What if they miss something tonight? Oh, I don’t know—say a hit man walks in the door?”

“Not likely, Detective.” The mayor flicked his fingers to send them on their way.

“We saw your help-wanted ad on TV tonight—the press conference,” said Mallory. “It’s like you begged a stone killer to murder a little boy. Is that why you think he won’t come after you? Because you’re his new client?”

This test of the waters should have brought on outrage and threats on her badge. But Polk only wore a smarmy expression, an unspoken suggestion to prove it or
shove it.
Apparently, he had tired of making an effort to hide what he was. Playing nicely with cops had become tedious.

She marched up the stairs, advancing on Polk, as if she planned to walk right over him on her way to the upper floor. The mayor stepped aside. They
all
did that.

“Mallory, that’s enough,” said Riker, playing peacemaker tonight—and philosopher, too. “If the mayor dies, he dies. . . . It’s all good.” Facing startled Andrew Polk, he said, “We’ll just do a walk-through—check windows and doors, make sure the alarm system’s working.
Now
that’s
gonna happen. . . . So you might wanna clean up any dope or body parts you got lyin’ around . . .
sir.”

—

OH
,
SWEET JESUS
. The kid’s uncle?

Iggy pulled the door shut to kill the crack of bright light from the hospital corridor.

He had spent the load of his dart gun on the cop who lay at his feet. And now a second dart, pulled from his pocket, was jammed into the other man before he could rise from his chair. Harold Quill had not cried out. He had missed that chance in the confusion of taking Iggy for another cop, and now, wide awake, terrified, paralyzed, he slumped back down in his chair by the hospital bed.

The small war for the room was over in five seconds, and so quietly that it did not wake the boy. All the light that remained was the little bulb mounted on the headboard of the bed, dim as a nightlight, and it only lit Jonah’s face. The uncle sat slumped over in shadow.

Iggy stared at this man, this brand-new complication in his life. And what had the kid said to Uncle Harry?

Screw it!
He would do them both. First Jonah.

The room stank of flowers. It smelled like home. Iggy saw no vases in the surrounding darkness, but somebody must have cleaned out every rose in the hospital gift shop. He leaned into the patch of light over the bed. Gently, he lifted the sleeping boy’s head to steal a pillow.

Jonah’s eyes snapped open.

Iggy backstepped to the foot of the bed. Why would the kid
do
that? What use were eyes to him?

The boy sat up. Nose high. Deep breath. “Aunt Angie?” He knuckled grains of sleep from his eyes and grinned wide as he threw off his bed sheets. “I know you’re here.”

No, kid. They don’t come back. Blame it on the stinking roses.

Or maybe Jonah had not yet shaken off his dreams.

Iggy gripped the pillow, and he sank down on the mattress. The boy turned toward him—
so over-the-moon happy
—his hands reaching out to touch, to
see.

“Lie down,” said Iggy. “It’s not gonna hurt.”

Jonah’s body stiffened, and his smile was a frozen mistake. Then he sagged, as if he had no bones, and collapsed, falling back to lie flat on the bed. His lower lip curled under his front teeth, and he bit down hard. He was
not
going to cry. This was the boy’s last get-even act. No tears.

Stubborn kid.
Good for you.

Jonah’s face was in shadow now.

The pillow blocked the light.

—

WHEN THE OFFICER
’
S
cell phone beeped, Harold Quill’s eyes jumped in their sockets. A nurse leaned into the room for a moment, and then she withdrew, closing the door, shutting out the quick crack of light from the hospital corridor. Plunged back into shadows, he could no longer see the body on the floor, sticking out from the hem of the sheet by one black shoe. Like that paralyzed policeman, Harry could not speak, nor could he move one finger, but his wide-open terrified eyes madly darted like ricochet marbles.